by R. C. Murphy
Rich shook his head and grinned. “No, not yet. All’s quiet here. What about the front, Clara?”
Meghan rolled her eyes, afraid for just a second they’d stick from the cold. “Not even a roach. What’s the point of babysitting produce at three in the morning?”
“Money.” Jarlan clapped Rich on the shoulder with one of his massive hands. Could the guy be any bigger? He should be in the WWF, not in the middle of nowhere California. Then again, if he was who she thought he was, his size had a purpose. She needed to keep an eye on him.
“Money isn’t everything, friend.” Rich tucked a strand of his long brown hair into the knit cap pulled down over his ears. “We’re almost done for the night. Will you be okay by yourself until dawn?”
Nodding, Meghan waved them off. “Nothing ever happens out here. If something does, I’ll eat my boots.”
Jarlan’s hazel eyes fell to her feet. “Not much leather there. You’d have better luck getting a full meal out of a rat. They’re big enough out here, away from the city.”
Rats? Meghan had been trained to face a lot of things, but rats made her skin crawl. She stole a look around the employee parking lot. Something skittered over the pavement near the eastern fence line. Her shoulders tensed. She was ready to scream if it was a rat, or apprehend anyone stupid enough to cut the fence while three security guards stood in eyeshot.
A leaf tumbled into the jaundiced light puddled on the asphalt. Meghan shook her head and rolled her shoulders to shake off the tension.
The big man laughed. “Try not to bludgeon any foliage to death while we’re gone. If something posing more of a threat does come along, use the phone in the guard’s office. Stay out of the warehouse. Without the code, you’ll send an alert to the police and I’ll be stuck doing enough paperwork to level a forest. Take care, Clara.”
Rich flipped a wave and the men headed for their cars parked near the front gate. They couldn’t be more different. Rich was tall, but Jarlan stood easily a foot taller than her. Jarlan’s black hair never grew over a quarter of an inch long in the six months she’d been working security alongside them. She was fairly certain he’d scowled at it in the mirror one too many times and it refused to grow any longer for fear of incurring his wrath. Jarlan joked quite a bit, but when he didn’t want to speak, he wouldn’t. Rich at least attempted to hold civil conversations. And Rich didn’t look like he could bench press a car—okay, maybe a VW Bug, but it was still a car.
Neither of the men were safe to be alone with. Not if the intelligence she’d received was to be believed.
Meghan finished her walk around the back of the property and slipped into the small guard shack beside the locked front gate. Jarlan and Rich were gone. The taillights of their cars turned the fog beyond the fence line blood red. With them gone, she gave into her desire to curl up beside the small space heater she’d brought in. It clicked, warming up.
“Might as well take care of business.”
Picking up the phone, she braced the headset against her shoulder and punched in a number she had memorized better than her social security number.
“You’ve reached the Osbourne’s. We’re not in right now, please leave a message.”
“Hey, Mom. It’s Clara. Still no luck on the apartment hunt. Can you save the classifieds for me? I’ll pick them up tomorrow.”
Meghan hung up and rubbed her frozen forehead. Waiting for results was the worst part of going deep cover. It’d taken weeks to establish her legend as Clara Osbourne, working god-awful hours with the security firm until she talked her way onto the warehouse gig. It wasn’t like the CIA was going to send her the money she needed to pay rent. Her cover needed to be organic, untraceable. In other words, she actually needed the damn job she was pretending to work.
The heater clicked softly, filling in the silence inside the guard shack. Meghan wiggled her toes inside her boot and cursed. They were so cold, moving hurt. Was it possible to get frostbite without temperatures dropping below thirty degrees? She wasn’t sure, but her toes screamed, “Yes!” when she scrunched them together in a vain attempt to encourage the warmth from the heater to work into her frozen flesh.
After almost two hours hiding inside the guard shack, Meghan grabbed her flashlight and headed out to do her last sweep around the property. She made a pit stop outside the front door to the warehouse and jiggled the door handle. Like every night she tried, it was locked. She didn’t have enough know-how about the security system to disable it and slip inside to get a good look at what was actually stored in there. The security company said Emerald Produce stored citrus in the building. Then again they wouldn’t come out and say, “By the way, the company is a front for a Russian sleeper cell.” No, that’d make her job too damn easy.
She finished her walk around the property and ducked into the relative warmth of the guard booth to finish up the end-of-shift paperwork the guys left her. How kind of them. Her handwriting was nearly unreadable, but she refused to take off her gloves to scribble notes about how quiet it’d been during her 8-hour shift in the fog and cold. Not even a rat to keep me company tonight. Thankfully.
Grabbing her purse, flashlight, and lunch bag, Meghan locked up the shack and climbed behind the wheel of her truck. Saying a prayer, she turned the key and the engine sputtered to life. Along with the lack of help with her rent, the CIA refused to grant her enough to buy a semi-reliable vehicle. They gave her enough cash to get to Fresno, California, buy a car, and feed herself for about a week. Until the first check from her security job came in, she’d been living in her truck and begging showers from the handful of friends she made when she got to town.
It was a twenty-five minute drive up Clovis Avenue to reach her apartment. The complex wasn’t anything to write home about. Empty fields surrounded it, but the place had the lowest crime rate of everything she found in her price range. Meghan parked in the spot designated as hers and took a breath to brace herself against the cold outside. She bee-lined down the sidewalk into the middle of the sprawling complex, shivering despite the jacket, scarf, and gloves. The latter made finding the right key for her door a pain in the ass. She managed after calling the key an asshole—twice.
Inside her apartment, it was dark and depressing. The lone second-hand recliner sat opposite the staircase where the bathroom and bedroom were. The rest of the living room was empty. Meghan dumped her armload of stuff on the card table serving as her kitchen table and headed straight upstairs for a shower. She hoped to hell the hot water heater was working. If she had to go to bed freezing and smelling like farmland, her meeting with her handler in the morning would seriously suck.
Dedication
For you.
You gave me the strength to see this mad venture through to the end.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I have to thank my wonderful editor NL “Jinxie” Gervasio. and publisher Just Ink Press. Without their hard work, there is no way Enslaved would ever see the light of day, at least not in a way which has me thrilled to pieces with every step closer we got to publishing.
A special shout out to my “cheerleaders” who kept me going on nights when I didn’t think I could finish writing the book: LK, Sandi, Hugh, Jenn, Alli, and all the others who I can’t remember right now. You guys rock my striped socks. And of course, my constant companion and knight in camouflage armor, Quamaine, who has been by my side since day one of my mad writing venture.
Lastly, I send all my love to my mother and nephew, who knew when to leave the crotchety writer be and let me write until my fingers were blistered. I’m so glad you guys both know how to cook, otherwise it would have been salads and ramen during the last month before my deadline.
Most of all I thank you, darling readers. Without you I’d be a nut-job scrawling pretty things on the wall of a padded cell. But hey, I hear the white coats with the extra-long arms are really warm . . .
Books by R.C. Murphy
Be Ours Forever
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R.C. Murphy, Enslaved (The Inbetween Novels)